


Seven Devils

by Amoris



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-18
Updated: 2013-11-01
Packaged: 2017-12-08 21:28:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/766204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amoris/pseuds/Amoris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the fall, there is no justice she can offer but to leave peacefully. </p><p>This is a tale of the parting of ways, and the ties that bind beyond farewell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. On the Tearing of the Walls

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my beta, jeymien, for her help (and the hand-holding). Title from the song of the same name by Florence + the Machine. Chapter titles inspired by the (occasionally incorrect) lyrics.

 

" _The time has come to act.  
There can be no half-measures."_

– _Anders; Act III_

* * *

**I**

He falls.

He falls, and as quickly as that, it is done.

( _this will never be done_ )

The others have watched motionless, held fast by vice or virtue, thoughts weighted, pieces spoken. He made it easy for them. He did not make it easy for her, she whom he had helped, she whom he had _healed_ ; he of such gentle concern.

She tries to be gentle. What a cruel mockery.

When none look away, they do him an honour. When none say a word, they offer him their forgiveness or their damnation, and when it is _done_ and her knife is sheathed and they have shared that last shuddering breath, none can say that the terrible deed was not hers, and hers alone.

She has kept her silent promise, writ in blood and trust, witnessed by time, and she is bound even in death to his terms and his rebellion.

( _you gave me no choice_ )

The blood pools on the cobbles as she kneels next to him. She studies him as if to memorize the face of a stranger, this last time of all times, and she cannot remember when exactly the soft lines had appeared at the corners of his eyes, or when precisely the silver had begun to feather his temples, but she sees him now and vows to remember him kindly, for even in her blind and righteous anger she knows that she will be the only one.

With moth wing touch, she closes his eyes. It is the only tenderness she can afford his troubled soul in front of her companions, and she fears her heart might burst with the pain of it.

It is the last respect she will ever pay him.

 

**II**

There is no time to mourn, no time to pause, or plan, or _think_. The smoke still rises from the hill, and the wails of the anguished and the dying carry in like ash on the evening breeze. The streets are almost empty now, an eerie calm settling like thickening mist, but she has no _time_ to wonder who is safe, who is hidden, who has fled.

She has to lessen this monstrous wrong done by the mage she had fought to keep free, the man she had befriended, had come to respect and support because she had _believed_ in the justice of his cause.

Now his cause is dying all around her, and faith is bleeding from the broken stones, and all the world is in pieces.

A fool she's been and a fool she'll remain if she doesn't _do something_ before the mages burn and the whole of the city goes up with them.

She knows this will be the longest night of her life.

And so she fights, because in times such as this the words continue to fail her and for all her trying it always leads to blood. All her trying has been for naught, the quarrels and the errands and the endless _helping,_ but she is their blighted _champion_ , damn it, champion of a dead cleric, a broken Circle, champion of a smouldering ruin.

This chaos is her curse to bear.

She throws herself against the might of the templars, her heart breaking not only for justice undone, but for everything she's gained and everything she's tossed aside in all her years beneath the shadow of these chains. She cannot stand idly by and allow the Circle to fall.

( _everything is falling now_ )

**III**

She fights, and she does not fight alone. Truly, she does not deserve loyalty such as this.

Kirkwall is _their_ home as much as it is hers, and her titled wealth sifts away as sand through fingers and still she is left with their strength at her back, their wit and their cunning and their passion, and she knows no greater certainty than their trust.

The rush of battle fills them all, right or wrong, _with me_ or _against me_ fading as the steel clashes and the blood spills and the crackle of magic saturates the air until all she can see and hear and breathe is fighting and dying and loss.

Her companions endure. _She_ endures, because even at the centre of the chaos and destruction, she is not alone. She needs them now, loves them, and knows she has them unto the ending of the world.

( _until sudden but inevitable betrayal takes them one by one_ )

She will not let it go so far.

The Gallows is the heart of the city's trouble, pierced already by the flaming blades of the branded templars. By the Maker, she cannot put a stop to this, no more than standing on the coast with her arms held wide will hold back the tide, but she has to _end_ it somehow or die trying.

Damn this title and all its tangled strings.

And so she plunges them into the darkness of the Gallows and the fortress swallows them whole.

Everything is still and quiet before the breaking of the storm. She gathers what remains of her strength around her, these pale faces, these trembling hands. Wayward souls, armed and armoured, cast to the winds of luck and fate.

These are all she has left in the world.

**IV**

( _please forgive me_ )

There are no tears now, no bittersweet farewells.

There are soft words and promises. There is talk of ale and tales and drunken songs, of glory and memory, of firesides and _tomorrows._

She cannot promise them tomorrow. She cannot promise them victory, or laurels, or songs to be sung. She can give them nothing but battle and the uncertainty of _after._ She takes their praise and their muted smiles, and she gives what she knows of courage and hope.

She wonders if it will be enough.

Time is against her now, stretching out languid and curious, a beast to be sated and slain. She has nothing left to offer, she has laid bare her heart, her expectation, her indecision, and when the final moments are upon her and she fears she might falter, when she is buried beneath the burden and shame and knowledge of what she helped to accomplish, _he_ is at her side and she wants for nothing more.

What he gives her, she cannot name, that age-old and bone-deep warmth from within. He has a hand in her hair, his eyes filled with fire and purpose, and the drums are sounding somewhere far away and he says –

But no, the belly of the fortress is full of lingering echoes and there are no drums, only the hollow pounding of her heart, and the statues weep at her lies because he does not know what she has _done_ and Fenris _says_ –

She tastes his fear and loves him fiercely then, and she makes him no promise that she cannot keep herself.

**V**

Battle comes for them, as fate waits for no man – and because it seems to harbour a special hate for her for no discernible reason besides.

The mages fall, true treachery come to wretched light. The templars stand fast. The lyrium _burns._ It is a terrible power, this red-veined madness, and the knight-commander is consumed. The fortress itself rises to fight against them, and Hawke's arms ache even as her bowstring sings and her arrows turn to breaking against the ancient bronze and stone.

And then –

And then there is a streak of wild white fury, a blur across the battlefield; there is a laugh and a wink and the flash of cold, curved steel; there's a call and a cry and a bellow like thunder; there is a branded breastplate and a burning blade, an unforeseen guardian who owes her _nothing_ , and suddenly –

( _blessed are the righteous, the lights in the shadow_ )

It is over.

It is _over,_ and through the billowing smoke and choking dust Hawke looks around, dazed and reeling, struggling to pull herself to her knees and searching for each bewildered face, and she counts as she always counts after the fighting is done, breath held tight in her throat as she –

( _one, two, three, four, five, six, why only – where is_ )

"Anders," she whispers as she lets loose that long-held sigh, a last eulogy only she will ever hear. She closes her eyes, mindful of each breath that comes after for it is one he will never draw, and it settles a little firmer then, that he is gone, he is gone because it had to be done, he is gone and done by her hand.

She wonders who will tend their wounds now. It's a knife twist in her heart and she _misses_ him and she misses her sister, her _mother_ , and damn the Maker's bloody will and all the good it has ever done. Her head hangs and she is almost undone to shameful tears, but there's a tugging at her elbow now, the familiar touch of cruel black steel made gentle with great care.

"We must go," says Fenris, and the others are calling her name, ragged and desperate, and all eyes are upon her. All eyes are upon her, and oh, but she is so very tired, and she feels she might break to a thousand bright faceted shards of herself, but the claw of his gauntlet is around her wrist now, that insistent pull, and she knows there will be no rest for her.

And so it is with a last glance back to the templars, stunned to silence, and to the knight-captain, her undeserved protector, that Hawke pulls herself to her feet and follows after the others.

**VI**

The city falls behind them into darkness, and the road stretches on, eternal.

With naught but the weapons in their hands and the armour on their backs, she leads her weary band west into the coastal forest. The Vimmark Mountains are an impenetrable wall to the north, but that matters little. There is nothing for them over those stony peaks, nothing but raiders and slavers and ancient roads that lead to the spires of magic and misery.

No, she will not go north. Hawke has had her fill of mages.

( _what mages have touched, and taken, and burned_ )

It is full dark beneath a crescent moon when they escape the city, and the smoke and the fires blazoning in the night have hidden all the stars. She cannot stop glancing back over her shoulder, dreading pursuit from templars driven by the anarchy and the cries for justice from their ravaged, leaderless city. They'll want her head.

( _someone always does_ )

But justice is gone and vengeance is all that is left behind, and so Hawke splits her companions into two groups, and sends the others ahead to scout the road and watch for troublemakers who would take advantage of the discord to further their own ends.

Even in exile, she must play her part.

Most citizens who would run had done so as the fighting started in the late hours of the afternoon, and there are only a pitiful few on the roads now. They carry their meagre sacks and spindle-thin children on their backs in the dead of night, defeated as she is, and so, so hollow.

She hears stories of the violence in Lowtown, and the dark rumour that fuelled it and sent it spiralling, and she bites her tongue lest she give herself away. She also hears tell of the valour of the city guard, and smiles to herself, and says nothing at all.

Soon, the farmsteads and villages become fewer and farther between, and the forest looms in closer to the edges of the road. The hours and the miles are behind them and dawn is not long off, but the stars are bright above them now, and it makes the travel seem a little safer.

And so Hawke follows her feet, for they seem to know the way.

**VII**

Their camp is a rocky outcrop overlooking the coast, far off the road where the treeline meets the cliff in a tangle of roots and loose soil. They seven come to their respite here as the dawn begins to gather beyond the horizon, and the Waking Sea turns to pale shadow.

Hawke takes the first watch, for she knows no sleep will come to her. Her mind is a wild, dark place just then, full of fresh guilt and old cruelties where slumber will not find purchase.

( _I shall not be left to wander the drifting roads_ )

So she sits, quietly watching the others fight their rest as they fight aught else, by sharpening blades and waxing strings, whispering to each other across the cold mist of morning. There is a clinging emptiness they do not speak of, his absence as immeasurable as his betrayal, a black mark upon each and every heart among them, and soon words fall away as tears, useless and clumsy.

Hawke's eyes are dry, and they burn with the weight of the night. The distance has done nothing to assuage the disquiet she feels within, and her grief begins to seep in at her softened edges, like water under a door locked and barred.

The sun rises; her companions sleep, and keep their weapons close.

She cannot sleep; she will not sleep. She fears her dreams. More, she fears what this day will bring – this day, and the next, and all that will come after. There is no peace to be found for her sorry band of misfits, no shelter, no safe harbour. She has made them homeless, she has made them abettors and traitors of the faith. Were there any justice left in the world for the likes of them –

( _what you have created, no man can tear asunder_ )

No, her contrition will be no easy path; she cannot simply water the ground with her very blood and call herself free of her burdens, a martyr ever after for a cause she didn't choose. She is no coward, whatever else may be said against her.

For now, though – for now, she will run. Not cowardice, some would say, but preservation. She _must_ endure. She will run, and her companions will follow. They would do no less for her.

She does not deserve loyalty such as this.

( _neither did he_ )


	2. On Evensongs and Battle Cries

" _That life is gone, and many good people with it.  
I carry the memory. That's enough." _  


– _Aveline; Act I_  


* * *

**I**

The bold sun gains the horizon. A new day is dawning clear over the city of Kirkwall.

( _what would you say if you could see it as we do now_ )

Hawke watches from the bluffs that rise starkly from the sea, miles away from the city and her white stone walls. The wind is thunderous as it whips her hair about to lash her face. Her ears ache, her skin stings, every inch of her is turned to ice, and yet she cannot move as she quietly waits for the sun to dispel the shadows from the walls of her city, for salvation to come and wash away the blood and black ash of the dark, cruel night.

The ascending dawn marches over her. The columns of smoke are drifting now against the pale pink sky, ugly battle scars that blur to nothing as the tears fill her eyes. She turns her face away from the sight in shame. She is awed and humbled by the beauty of this sunrise, and as the sea begins to glow, she is made breathless by the brilliance and purity of the light.

But she cannot bring herself to look again at the broken silhouette of a city clinging to the jagged shore in the east, and so she closes her eyes against such unbearable longing, and she prays because she does not know what else to do.

( _touch their hearts; let mine be the last sacrifice_ )

Her tears fall, unheeded. Her dirty face is marked by weakness.

The others sleep on, unable – unwilling – to see.

Hawke keeps her distance, and stays away from where her companions sleep under the protection of the trees and the shifting shade. She does not want to see the flutter of their eyelids, she does not want to hear the soft breaths that pass over their lips, nor the slumbered oaths that are carried upon them, the hidden truths spoken by those unguarded minds dancing at the edges of the Fade.

She does not think her heart could not bear the burden.

She envies their peace, but not their dreams. Her dreams would be terrible things, slick with blood, heavy with broken stone and thick with choking dust, echoing with voices, those love lost and those long dead. She wonders what her friends dream, if the Fade calls out to them, the torn veil shivering as it whispers of their sins. She hopes not, hopes that they have found refuge in their dreams.

( _sleep and wake screaming, begging, please don't_ )

The morning passes, each hour as inevitable as the next. The sun continues its steady climb, unwavering in its domination of the day. She paces her small stretch of cliff with dauntless patience, but the crash of the surf is not enough to drive out her thoughts and the rush of the wind cannot make her forget what she has done, and she would scream at the sky, swear an oath and a curse to the Maker, if only it would take away the pain.

But the Maker is not listening, and there is no promise of vengeance she can make that will ever repair what has been shattered so easily, and so she falls to her knees on the rocky bluff and hangs her head in grief, gritting her teeth against a wail no waves or wind could hide.

This is how Aveline finds her not long after.

"The city still stands, I see," she says, as if it is truly so insignificant a thing. Her hand descends upon Hawke's shoulder, and the flex of her bare fingers is bracing and strong.

( _left in capable hands, and who has torn you from those capable hands_ )

"Small favours," says Hawke as she stands. Her knees protest, but she is not turned to salt and stone there on the cliffs of the Wounded Coast, and now she rises, undefeated.

"Get some rest, Hawke. I'll take the watch," Aveline says, in a tone that brooks no argument.

The hand on Hawke's shoulder is firm as it nudges her away from her rocky perch toward the shelter and shadow of the camp. Hawke goes reluctantly, looking back only once, and she catches the briefest glimpse of Kirkwall smouldering in the sun before it disappears behind a verdant tangle of boughs, and from then on all she can see is the forest for the trees.

 

**II**

The first days on the road are not kind to them – and in those first few days, they are not kind to each other.

The words are to blame, Hawke realizes, for there are none to be found when needed the most, even for those of her friends born with tongues of silver and honey. Without the stories, without the laughter, without the promises, there is naught between them but deeds done and spilt blood, and she doesn't know how to reconcile the death and destruction that lies in their wake with the jaded silence that greets her each and every time she catches their eyes.

( _say something damn you please talk to me_ )

Still, there is strength to be taken from those bonds of deeds and blood, hope to be found in their purpose and their pain, but pride and blame are _tricky_ things, vain and callous and blinding in a most dangerous way. So very easy to fall prey to, and so very impossible to escape.

A bit like love, really.

Her idle mind is, at times, a nasty piece of work, and she finds herself wondering, far too bitterly and far too often, if she has failed them, these tough and tumbled souls whose paths have crossed and joined with hers. Hurtled into chaos, pompous and prophetic; she has dragged them all with her, grumbling and grousing, every step of the way, and even if once upon a time they had dug in their heels in protest so hard they left ruts in the paving stones of Hightown, it hadn't seemed to matter, not _then._ But now –

( _this love is tearing us to pieces_ )

_Now,_ they are past the point of no return, as if it had been some conscious, level-minded choice to be debated and decided somewhere along the way. No matter where they go from here, they cannot go _back_. She cannot return to them their homes, their livelihoods, their _lives_. Loyalty has taken everything from them, just as trust has taken everything from her, and still they follow and still she leads, and even though though the rhythm and ritual seems the same, it's all _wrong_ somehow, inescapable, absolute, and she doesn't know what to _do_.

And so, like the craven she claims she is not, Hawke continues west, telling herself time and again that none would travel with her who did not want to stay at her side.

She lays her intentions before these companions of hers, plainly and truthfully spoken over the fire on their second night out of the city. The six of them watch her across gulfs as wide as the Waking Sea, and she knows at a glance that their hearts are weary and their tongues are leaden, and it comes as no surprise in the end that not one of them tries to argue her out of it, because _better ideas_ have been in short supply for far too long.

After, when the fire has burned down to embers and meagre, licking flames, and her watch is just beginning, only _he_ approaches her. The faint glow of the firelight catches in the silver of his hair, ripples along the length of his blade before he moves beyond the reach of the light to where she sits in darkness, cloaked and concealed. He comes to her in silence, to stand beneath the tree in which she perches, where she has watched the moon and stars more than she has watched the scarp and wilds as she ought to.

It is such cumbersome quiet, this distance they hold between them, even now; this is where they thrive in each other, this is where they have learned to coincide with dignity and reticent grace, where words are abandoned and the rules of man and Maker have no place.

He is her sentinel, and she is his saviour.

It is a delicate arrangement, a hopelessly tangled complication. Theirs is a love fed with blood and bickering, ruled by guarded, wounded hearts, but she cannot give him _less_ of herself, no more than she can free him from the snarls of lyrium that linger under his skin like vile, deathless poison.

( _threaded through the skin of him, pull at one and it all falls apart_ )

Below her, Fenris stands as a statue, carved of wood and timeworn stone, unaware of her sobering thoughts or her dark affections. His presence, as ever, is the only comfort he has to spare, and so he offers it up willingly, with such reserved certainty that her temperamental heart is solaced beyond any reassurance mere words could bring.

She sleeps then, she thinks, in her cradle of wind-twisted branches, and if she dreams, there is only silence and light.

 

**III**

The words come, too little, too late – and none, it seems, are for her.

If the truth be told, Hawke scarcely notices that she has become the odd one out, so calmed and captivated is she by the timid emergence of these souls who have somehow become the only family she has left. It comes delicately at first, their gentle reopening as petals after rain, and she finds herself an onlooker, apart and yet within, a forgotten guest stumbling unnoticed upon something solemn and deeply intimate.

Struck silent, she is fascinated by their tenacity, and frightened by their fragility. They are neither unscathed nor washed clean, but even to walk away with their sanity and skins intact has come at great cost, and Hawke is starkly reminded that hers is not the only heart aching, and hers is not the only spirit broken. She wonders and she worries, but she keeps her comforts and her counsel, and says nothing at all.

Her assurance is not arrogance, nor disregard for their suffering.

So much has been left behind along the way.

Now, only the ties remain, these unbreakable bonds forged in battle, tempered by firesides, etched with laughter and song. This is how they find each other through dark or storm or chaos, these invisible chains that crisscross between them, a mess of stories and grudges and promises kept, each link made of all the bits of vellum and ribbon and twine that keep them from straying and losing their way.

( _stay close to me please don't stray so far_ )

Just as Fenris reached out to her in his own lonely, quiet way, the others have begun to tug at their bindings, drawing closer, pulling away. With soft sighs and careful handling, they _try_ to heal each other, _try_ to mend the damage done by passion and arduous reckoning, and oh so slowly, the silence that has followed them since Kirkwall begins to fill with voices.

That each in turn seems _diminished_ by grief, somehow, Hawke tries her best to ignore, because beneath each muted smile and peaceable gesture, there is a certain mark of _sameness_ that even betrayal and banishment cannot alter, and oh, she is heartened by it.

Here is Merrill with her simple beauties and harmless curiosity, Varric with his cards and his tall tales, and even Isabela with her well-meant troublemaking. Here is the vibrant wonder of green eyes, the smugness of a strong chin, the innuendo of a cheeky grin, all of it so familiar, so _normal_ , that if Hawke were to close her eyes to the road and the trees and the dirt on their faces, it might seem for a moment that nothing in all the world has changed.

But then it _happens_ , as the inevitable always does. There is a laugh too loud and too strained to be real, or a story that stops short at the mention of a name, or perhaps a sigh and a simper and a tear never brushed away quick enough to hide, and then the illusion is lost. It shatters into so many pieces of itself, and scatters like pearls loose from their string, refracting memories like pale sunlight.

And just like that, Hawke must begin to reconcile anew.

( _the more the misfit and no longer merry, who are we now if not who we were_ )

Only her royal archer continues to elude her; Sebastian, her torn and troubled prince.

Each morning he awakens with distant, shadowed eyes, and there are no words or comfort to pull him from the depths of his grief. He speaks little, if at all, and the sheer emptiness in his voice turns her heart to breaking.

Each morning he leaves them as the sun gains the horizon, to _scout_ , he says, and to reflect. His armour glints in the pure, bright light of the sun as he disappears around the next bend in the road, the set of his shoulders strong and unbowed for all the burdens he bears alone, his stolen city and tested faith, the death of a woman he has respected and honoured, a woman whose only wish was for balance, faith, and peace.

Would that she could share with him the weight of his burdens, follow him and walk beside him in his moments of anguish and despair, but then she remembers the terrible cost of his fealty, the shadow of a healer's ghost filling the space between them, and she falls back as she was to watch him walk away.

 

**IV**

The road gradually turns northwest, meandering through the dense and darkening forest toward the foothills of the mountains, and away from the coast and the whitecap waves of the Waking Sea. For the first time in near to a decade, Hawke cannot smell the salt on the wind, nor readily hear the raucous calling of the gulls. The scent of loam and decaying wood hangs heavy in the still air here, redolent of Ferelden, of ancient, primal magics, and come nightfall she can barely sleep for the quiet.

( _we were fools to lose our way, where will we go if not home_ )

On their fifth day out of Kirkwall, a mile marker points the way to Cumberland – and to the Imperial Highway on which it rests. The paint of the sign has faded, the wood is silvered and warped, and soon the untended saplings and climbing vines will claim the marker altogether, but the sight of it now as it is gives them little hope.

As much as her heart might desire it, Hawke cannot hide in the woods forever. The news of the Kirkwall chantry and the death of the Grand Cleric will reach the other cities long before they ever set foot in them. The only comfort that remains to them is that while their names are quite notorious, their faces most certainly are not – but for Fenris, and his lyrium-stained skin. And Aveline, in her captain's plate.

There is little need to hurry. They will catch up to the world soon enough.

They take their midday rest beside the sign and its crooked shadow. Hawke watches as Merrill makes an effort to clear away the bracken and choking weeds from the wooden post, but in the struggle she pricks herself on a hidden thorn, and sits back, discouraged. The blood that wells at the tip of her finger shines in the dappled light, and she studies it a moment, bemused, before she puts it to her lips.

Close to Hawke's side, Fenris makes an angry noise in the back of his throat. It startles her out of her thoughts, and she aches for him that so innocent a gesture could cause him such unease. He stalks away, leaving her alone, leaving her to wonder if such wounds will ever begin to heal in this new landscape of disorder and upheaval – after all, even she herself can no longer remain a stalwart defender of mages, not after the Gallows and the grave, unholy sight of utter desperation and truth festered to poisonous ends.

( _all our broken bits will fit together and our words will fall away_ )

Brooding, selfish thoughts follow her through the day, her only company on the road as she keeps her customary distance from the others. The afternoon passes in a dull haze of footfalls and birdsong, and when the shadows lengthen and the dusk begins to grow, they break from the road to follow the game trails deeper into the woods.

The heart of this forest is a wild and tangled place. They make their camp in the shelter of a rocky outcrop, cramped and damp and dreary. The delicate amity of the daylight hours dissipates as warmth to the cold, and before long even the heat of their fire is not enough to draw them together against their struggles. No matter their shaken souls, no matter that they have been tempered by this tragedy. They are trapped, each and every one of them, held fast in prisons of their own making, chained as slaves to their memories and regret.

These are not strangers to injustice and bleak days that she sits amongst, this she knows. She _knows_ that each has learned from bitter and hard-won experience, but on the road and on the run, there is no safe and solid ground for them to make their stand.

There is no spell that can banish the ghosts of cowardice and betrayal.

There is no blade that can win the battle against the demons of shame and sorrow.

Against themselves, they are defenseless.

( _how can this be what we promised not to die for_ )

 

**V**

Sebastian returns soon after they have settled, the somber lull cast over the camp a fitting welcome. His humble offering of peace, a brace of wild hare, is hanging from his belt. Merrill takes them from him to clean, but he gives her no true gratitude, only hollow courtesy.

He kneels down next to the fire with all the grace of movement his light plate will allow. "There is a small settlement to the west," he says. "I saw the light of their windows from atop a ridge."

Curled up amid a writhing tangle of exposed roots, Hawke says nothing, even as Sebastian glances her way, his eyes clear and cold. His is not an expression of compassion or condolence or even contempt, but in the feeble, leaping light, she can discern little else.

Perhaps it is better that way.

( _trust was our enemy and leniency too and vigilance is never enough_ )

"Is it safe, this village?" Merrill asks. Such a sweet, forlorn hope.

Isabela laughs. "Never mind safe, is there a _tavern_? I know that I could do with a drink, I don't know about you lot."

"Safe or not, we'll have to risk it. We need supplies," Aveline says. "And a proper rest." Her voice is quiet, and though she sits next to them and shares their fire, she seems lost and distracted, a thousand miles away – or maybe it is not so many as a thousand but fewer than two hundred, the distance since travelled that rests between Kirkwall, her husband, and where she now stands.

Hawke forces herself to speak and play the leader. "How far?"

( _how far have you ranged, my prince, and have you dreamt of flying_ )

"A half-day's journey," says Sebastian. "The road will take us there." Again their eyes meet and even this comes to an impasse, amounting to nothing more than a fleeting moment of feigned understanding. Whatever walls he has shored up against her, she cannot breach without renunciation and repentance, but by the Maker, she has never had the temperament for grovelling.

"Tomorrow, then," Hawke says, lustreless and tired.

Aveline nods. "Tomorrow. Spit that damn rabbit already. The first watch is mine," she says, far more commanding than Hawke will ever be. She sets her lips to a grim line, and turns her back to the rest of them, disappearing into the twilit gloom beyond the glow of their fire to where her eyes might learn to see what lingers beyond the light.

Hawke watches her go, and aches for her, and slowly, she begins to understand.

"But is it _safe_?" Merrill asks again, so unaware.

( _it shall never be safe again, for you the least of all, dear heart_ )

Not one among them is brave enough to answer.

After, when their meagre meal has been eaten and the fire has burned ever lower and all in dismal silence, Hawke seeks out Aveline in the darkness beyond the camp. Her eyes are slow to adjust. She catches a glimpse of the stars, a patch of midnight blue sky against the blackness of the towering trees, but it is the glint of armour that draws her to where Aveline stands sentry only a few paces beyond the edge of the firelight.

"Do you want some company?" she asks, keeping her voice low.

Aveline does not startle, only sighs. "Couldn't hurt."

Hawke crosses her arms over her chest, and cranes her neck to look at the sky and the faint, flickering stars again, but the trees grow closer here, their boughs gnarled together like entwined fingers, and there is naught to see but shroud and shadow.

"You seem _elsewhere_ ," Hawke offers when it becomes clear that Aveline has no piece to speak.

"I _feel_ elsewhere," Aveline says quietly, and after a great hesitation adds, "and I think it's time I returned to it."

Hawke had been expecting no less, though her heart quails at the affirmation. Still, she is nothing if not strong in the presence of such a noble soul, and so she bears her pain as best she can and asks, "So this is to be our last watch together?"

"For a while."

Her next words are hard to say, and she struggles to keep her voice calm as she says them, for the sake of this stalwart friend who has never given her anything less than everything she had. "Well, we'd best not waste time talking, then."

She can hear the smile as Aveline speaks, and her heart warms even as it breaks.

"Thank you, Hawke."

 

**VI**

Hawke stands next to Aveline in silent vigil to ten years of friendship, and as the night marches ever on, the onslaught of memory is relentless.

Never before has she been such a willing victim.

( _how will we stand without your back to ours_ )

She recalls the first time she and Aveline shared the watch. It was during their first – and only – night together as they had left their homes, six weary refugees thrown by circumstance into such an ill-made truce. Never in Hawke's memory had she known such unlikely allies – a notion her time in Kirkwall was to remedy, certainly, but on that night, the last night she would sit watch over her baby brother, no, she had never known such companions as the templar and his fierce bride.

It was a _long_ night, dark and starless. There was no safe place to rest, caught in the open as they were, and so they had found shelter in the burnt-out remnants of an abandoned barn. She still remembers the stench of charred beams, and how the stones were warm to the touch.

The empty fields were a desolate place at night, haunted into the small hours of the morning by the howling of the wind. The darkspawn had left the countryside a razed, wasted ruin. The fires of the horde to the north and west burned brightly, endlessly, giving the horizon a hellish cast, tainting the clouds a bloody red. And all the while, the beat of the drums rolled in like thunder.

Even all these years later, she can still remember the ashen taste of fear; it had truly seemed then that the end of the world had come.

( _silly girl you were, almost out of the woods and only at the beginning_ )

That long and terrifying night, when dawn was hours off, a distant promise to the patient and the wary. Aveline had appointed herself to the watch, and so she watched the fires in the north. The burning of Lothering. Less the patient and more the wary, Hawke had appointed herself as the watch partner, and so she watched Aveline – and the templar, Wesley, as he lay sleeping, fitful and alone, a few feet away.

She could never have known then what plagued his sleep so, but remembering him as she does now, just as she remembers Carver and the constant fall of dark hair in his eyes, the surge of guilt and pain is as fresh as the day they had lost them both to the darkspawn, and she can scarcely stand herself for the useless hurting that echoes in her heart to that very day.

Looking over, Hawke wonders what Aveline thinks as she stares down the forest and its unshakable darkness, and finds that even after ten years together, she cannot guess the answer.

Aveline has never guarded anything quite so closely as she does herself.

This was the measure she had taken on that very first night, when she and Aveline sat in silence as all the world was burning, keeping watch over those who remained to them. Those who were most dear.

Gone, now, all of them. Lost to foolishness, to carelessness, and their own mortality. Taken by chance and blight and magic. Dead and gone, each in cruel turn like the changing of bitter seasons, and only the watchers live and linger and carry on. It has been no kindness to be all that remains.

( _it was_ _only our burden to share, ours and ours alone_ )

 

**VII**

Come morning, Hawke parts with Aveline on bad terms.

It almost seems inevitable, though she hardly _means_ to. She has never known a truer friend than Aveline Vallen; here she _stands,_ after all, in this godforsaken forest, following this wayward road between the lazy mountains and the restless sea. The choice was hers, as it had belonged to all of them, thrust upon them as the city fell, but the battles are over now, and the smoke no longer rises from the east, and so perhaps the time has come for new choices. Choices to be carefully weighted as they stand in the lingering shadow of the past – and in this, Hawke can find no comfort.

( _never to be seen again, who will be the next to say goodbye_ )

Her _escort_ has lasted long enough, Aveline has rationalized, though it has been in no official capacity, of course. At least, this is what she tells the others after they have woken and greeted the day with cursing and laughter, and stretched yesterday from their aching limbs. For all the cheerfulness Aveline tries to muster, there is a darker trace there, as dire as it is doubtful, and Hawke wonders if she is the only one to recognize that keenest of edges in the captain's steady tone.

She watches as Aveline flushes with her farewells, and finds her strength to face this goodbye in each handshake, and smile, and nod of respect. There are no embraces, no wistful tears. It comes as no surprise to any of them, Hawke can see it on each face in turn as they look away, toward the woods where no one save the trees will see what emotion lurks behind their eyes.

Hawke is last, and walks down the road for a bit with Aveline, her feet turned east for the first time in days, and though she has no guarantee, she knows it will be the last time for a good while longer than that. Aveline seems eager, and _that_ is no wonder. Donnic is on her mind; he is there in her eyes and in each soft sigh, each breath that comes easier and easier, the hard part over now.

Well, almost over. Hawke envies this assurance. Aveline is too distracted to take notice.

( _post and pension all in pieces, pray they let you pick it up_ )

Lost somewhere behind a bend in the road, Marian Hawke and Aveline Vallen part ways.

"Will you be able to manage this rabble without me?" Aveline asks. She laughs, an attempt that Hawke can only assume is to mask her genuine concern.

"I doubt it. Isabela has probably talked Varric out of two shirt-buttons since we've been gone," Hawke says. She manages a smile, but it is a weak and weary thing. She has lost so many in her life to death and bad judgement that she has never mastered the art of goodbye, and she fears it shows, heart pattering away on her sleeve and bleeding all over.

Aveline's shoulders slump, and Hawke feels diminished next to her, even though the good captain scarcely casts the towering shadow she once did, and her face holds none of that stubborn confidence Hawke admires so. Pale and serious, her armour dull and dirty, Aveline is all but a ghost of herself. But there is hope in her eyes now, shining through all else as it tends to do where Donnic is concerned, and Hawke finds it heartening even at this most lonesome of crossroads.

"Where will you go? I probably shouldn't ask, but –"

"West, for now. Perhaps north, to Starkhaven. If that's what Sebastian wants."

Aveline smirks. "Already eager for more trouble?"

"No, not eager."

"I thought you might consider returning to Ferelden."

This surprises Hawke, and the cut of her eyes is quick and deep as she turns them on Aveline. "Why would I want to do that?" she asks, and scoffs, and shakes her head, so disbelieving – as if it were truly so, and not just her ignorance and her cowardice and her little girl heart so broken and scared.

Aveline flushes once more, her cheeks heating beneath her freckles. There is a flash of hurt before her gaze turns to steel. "I had thought after so long, you might want to return home. With Fenris."

( _home is a loft and a basket of apples, home is a staff by the door_ )

"I will try to write you when we reach Starkhaven," Hawke says instead, for it seems appropriate, something her mother might say by the gate in the sunlight – but the gate was burned and splintered now, the house no more, and there is nothing left to her to remember Mother by, even her bronze-etched name on the chantry wall is turned to ash and dust.

"I'm sure I'll hear the news long before you find the time to sit down and write," Aveline says with a bit of a smile and more exasperation than she has a right to, taking her leave as she is.

"I said I would try," replies Hawke, and the smile she returns is merely reflection.

"Take care of yourself, Hawke." Aveline's gauntlet is off now and her hand reaches out, and her fingers are calloused and fair. Hawke takes her hand and squeezes it, watches the link between them and thinks it as strong as any ever made, and she fears she may never be able to let it go.

She does anyhow, unwilling, and that night she dreams of Ferelden.


	3. On the Raising of the Stakes

" _The past's past. I learned that young.  
If it can't bring you gold or giggles, what's the point in dwelling on it?"_  


– _Isabela; Act II_  


**I**

The village through which their road winds is on no map that Hawke has ever seen.

A native of Ferelden, she is unsure if she can truly call it a village at all. It sits peaceful and unassuming along a swift current coming down out of the mountains. A scattering of thatch-roofed houses and a lumber mill. A common square and a single well-tended field. It is no village to her when it does not even seem to have a _chantry_ , but she knows that the people who live in those thatch-roofed houses and gather in that dusty little common square would most certainly disagree with her.

She does not mean to be so dismissive, so cruel. She's just so damned _tired_.

Aveline's departure has rattled them all and slowed their pace, and it is late into the afternoon by the time they reach the outskirts of the village. Fences run in crooked, broken lines along the side of the road. The sun hangs lazily in the sky to the west, blinding them with its harsh and righteous light, sinking ever quicker toward the horizon and stealing all their hours away.

What a strange sight they must be. There are no elves or dwarves among the villagers in the square. The children stop their chasing to stare. A group of men abandon their work at the mill and walk with measured purpose toward them.

"I am the elder here," speaks one among them. It is no greeting. "What can I do for you?"

"We are weary from the road," Hawke says, ever at the fore. "We would like to rest a few days."

The man's face settles grimly. "You may set camp there upon the verge. Our well is yours whilst you are here."

"And our thanks are yours. What would you have in return?"

"News of Kirkwall, or nothing at all," says the elder. "These are dark times. We give what we can."

She does not have the skill for this and looks plaintively at Varric, who steps forward to retell – _reshape –_ their story. Perhaps it will be a tale of bravery and ignorance from the very edge of the fray. Perhaps there will be a harrowing escape.

Perhaps, for once, she will not be the hero.

( _just a nobody just for once, for once and for all please Maker_ )

She will have to thank him later, regardless. She does not listen now as she should but hangs back instead, struck dumb by a memory greyed by dust and time, a memory of another elder facing down a pair of deserters caught crossing the fields that surrounded her quiet little village.

Hawke remembers her brother's bulky shadow, the starlight and the torchlight, the dogs barking in the distance. It had not been their finest hour. So distracted was she by the traps the farmer had set and her brother barrelling across land once familiar that Hawke had not seen the watchman bearing down upon them. He had caught her around the waist in the dark, hauled her clean off her feet, and her brother's shout as a spring-trap snared his ankle had woken the village.

Carver had never forgiven her for not warning him, for making him look the fool. It was a silly grudge to hold.

( _always rushing ahead, you great brute, why didn't you wait_ )

Without ceremony, the watchman had thrown the pair of them before Elder Miriam. Hawke had wilted under the old woman's disapproving stare, she who went to Ostagar to keep her brother alive, she who would lose him only days later.

" _So it is over, then,"_ Miriam had said to the pale defeat she saw in the faces staring up at her, faces she had known and cared for and blessed in the sunshine of an afternoon, faces now streaked with blood and tears and fear.

" _May the Maker help us all."_

Hawke returns from her reverie to the snap of spindly fingers. A hand waves in front of her face. She blinks at Isabela, startled.

"Oh, there you are, Hawke. I was wondering where you'd floated off to," the pirate says.

Hawke sighs. There is no lying to Isabela.

"Home," she says. It means nothing now.

 

**II**

The village that reluctantly shelters them lies four days east of the Imperial Highway in the shadow of the last great peak of the Vimmark mountains. When they leave, Hawke and her weary companions will come out of the foothills to the plains of the Nevarre and their choices will be few: to travel northwest and cross over the hills to double back into the Marches or to make their way south to the coast and follow the rocky shores west to the great Nevarran city of Cumberland.

Truly, it is no choice. They run from Kirkwall, they run from Starkhaven. The Marches hold no future for them.

For now, however, they rest. There will be time enough yet to worry about where they will go and what they will find when they get there. There will be time enough yet to wonder what will become of them when their running comes to its end.

( _what do you do, you asked, do you remember_ )

They stay in the village two days. During the hours of sunlight, from dawn until dusk, a knobbly-kneed child with wide solemn eyes is sent to keep a close watch on them. He perches upon the leaning fence to peer at them with unsullied interest; they learn his name is Daniel and are careful that he never learns theirs.

Come nightfall, one of the men from the mill chases the boy off to his mother and sits himself at the end of the lane. He keeps a flask in hand to guard against the cold; there is a bow and quiver at his side to guard against all else.

Diligently, they set their own watch. Without Aveline, the first shift always falls to Hawke. She will have it no other way. She likes the dark and she likes the quiet; she is at her ease with wind and moon and stars. She loves the laughter of her friends and their stories and their struggles are as music to her sorrowed heart, but their voices have no place in the nighttime silence and she cannot bear to share the peace she finds.

When she wakes Sebastian to take her place, or Varric, or Isabela, there is a secret smile on her face, however faint, that cannot be undone no matter how tired she has become, and in the pale darkness beyond the torchlight of the village there is no one to see and wonder at its substance.

Sometimes, she thinks, it's all right to have a secret.

 

**III**

Their days of rest slip past like the fading of a dream. The colour comes back into cheeks once wan with weariness and the dust of the road. The light returns to eyes once dull with remembered sacrifice and shame. They smile and they laugh; they sleep, they dream.

There is a certain measure of peace to be found in those evanescent days spent by the roadside of a village no cartographer has ever cared to mark on a map. Varric promises to remember her well in song, and young master Daniel too, of course, and oh how the boy smiles at that.

Hawke thinks, perhaps, they are moving on.

It frightens her more than she is prepared to allow, and pushes such thoughts away.

Such ignorant days. Such blessed days.

Varric has decided to pen the story of his travels to paper, this great adventure of his, though neither pen nor paper does he have. Hawke smiles to herself as she listens to his muttered attempts to commit every moment to memory. He leans back against the trunk of a gnarled and ancient oak, his eyes shut against the dappled sunlight, Bianca resting, intimate and deadly, across his lap. Hawke wonders what he thinks of, what he writes to himself in the scrolls of his mind, and she cannot wait to hear him spin this tale as he has spun all the others, with passion and ferocity and secretly just for her.

Here she finds clarity.

Later in the morning, she lies with her head in Merrill's lap upon a bed of pale wildergrass and watches the lazy clouds that string along their patch of blue sky. Gentle, graceful fingers weave honeysuckle into her long dark hair. She closes her eyes and drifts away on the melody of Merrill's every exhale, those fragmented whispers of a life left behind, not of city stone and hungry children but of pine and brook and _halla_ in the vale.

Here she finds beauty.

Sometimes her peace is long in coming. Sometimes her peace does not come at all, and she sits up in the night beside the sputtering glow of the banked fire and watches the sparks dance into the darkness. She finds she is not alone in her watching, that Isabela's jewel bright eyes follow those same sparks to where they die in the dark, to where the stars cannot touch with their light. There are no words between them, for none yet exist to give meaning to the loneliness that calls to their wild and wandering hearts. At least, Hawke thinks, she is not alone.

Here she finds solace.

Still, to some she remains unforgiven, though the burden of such wrongs done should not fall to her alone. She knows that now. She watches her prince with a discretion that comes perilous close to fear as he keeps his careful distance. His sadness frightens her; his blame haunts her. She wonders at times if the bleak sorrow in his eyes will ever fade, and if the devotion he once laid at her feet has finally crumbled away to nothing. She prays as she knows he would have her do, but the answers are beyond her reach.

Here she finds regret.

And then –

In the dusky gloom of the last day, when the world is dark and the sky is on fire, she steals a kiss from Fenris beneath the reaching shade of an alder tree. His breath on her skin is a whisper of things she had thought he had long forgotten. Overwhelmed, she pulls him down to meet her lips again to taste what she can of this rare, fleeting tenderness. He swallows her words, unspoken, unknown, and her heart could surrender unconditionally from the pain and unbearable joy of loving him.

Here she finds courage, and here she finds grace, and perhaps if she lies to herself, she can find the will to go on.

 

**IV**

There are bandits on the road to Cumberland.

In the end, the fault is hers. Daydreaming, she walks them right into an ambush, somewhere along a strangled stretch of their rugged track, where the road is hemmed with steep, sandy ditches and the trees press tight and lean close. Ghosts of the forest, silent, certain, a dozen men quickly surround them.

( _will it never end_ )

Battered armour, notched blades. Their taunts are cold, their smiles cocksure.

A few silver is all they ask. A few paltry silver. She does not have it. Their weapons tell a different story; their armour, yet another. She cannot deny there is a toll to be excised here, but she swears to Andraste that she will not be the one to pay it.

The first of their attackers falls to Hawke's arrow, his soft throat pierced and spilling; the second to Fenris and the brunt of his razor steel. After this, she loses count. After this, the world is reduced to an arrow's tip, and when she stares down its shaft all she sees and all she knows is the silence that comes with a single breath held and then the subtlety and suddenness of _release_ , again and again, until –

Until a force like thunder blindsides her, and she is knocked down, sent reeling. Her bow is rent from her grasp, and she fumbles for the dagger in her boot, careless, so _careless_ , but her struggle is in vain as the full weight of her assailant descends upon her.

His blade is ready, mocking. Its edge glints fiercely off every swaying spot of sunlight.

Her arm comes up. The bite of his knife is cruel and efficient, but her block has unbalanced him and a braced arm is not a naked throat and by the grace of the Maker she is not undone, not here, deep in the woods at the hands of a faceless stranger.

Someday –

But someday is not today, and she heaves, _rolls_ , and in the confusion she unsheathes her own knife and buries it hilt deep in the pulse-point of his neck. In that moment they are no longer strangers. What passes between them is intense, intimate, but it _passes_ as clouds over sun, as shadows on the moon, one weakened heartbeat at a time.

She is on her feet before he falls. He bleeds all over her boots before he dies. There is blood in the grass, dripping down the stalks like crimson dew. It soaks into the dust. His blood, hers.

She retrieves her bow. Too late. The bandits are dead and the others stand over them, staring down at this bloody work they have done as if it is for the first time, this grudging service rendered.

She knows. She remembers. She will spend her life trying to forget.

"Hawke – you're hurt. Bloody _hell_ , that looks deep."

( _anybody need healing, he would always, always ask_ )

Ever so lightly, Isabela touches her elbow. Hawke lifts her arm; blood is pooling in her bracer, dripping like syrup from her fingertips. She winces. Isabela's hands are not made for tasks such as this.

"You miss him, don't you?" she asks after a long silence, after the gash _,_ tender and gaping, is clean. She wraps the bandage tightly. It is clumsily done but when she knots it, there is a deftness in her fingers that whispers of the wind and sea. It will do.

"Sometimes," Hawke admits, such a small word to hold such desperate meaning. For it is not _sometimes_ , but _endlessly_ , until she is dull and numb with it and she cannot breathe for the aching. But sentiments such as these are hers and hers alone to hold and to keep. She is not ready to give them up.

( _you have no place in this future you have given us_ )

 

**V**

And so comes an end to their running, only if for a while.

Gently descending above their heads, the sharp grey-green spine of the Vimmark mountains winds down and down until it curves gently into the rolling foothills that give way to the plains of the Nevarre. Just like that, the Free Marches are behind them. The world lies ahead.

There is so much that drives them forward: impatience, exhaustion, hunger. And fear, as well, undeniable in its relentless pursuit. But civilization calls, drawing them ever on. There is no stopping the eager leading of their weary hearts by their restless, rebellious feet. In the very distant distance, they can catch a glimpse of the sea. And there, glinting on the shore as a jewel upon a bed of living green and spun gold, is their destination.

Cumberland. Her sandstone walls and bronze-domed spires grow with each passing day.

Before – for all times are now _before_ times – Hawke had rarely given much thought to the cities that lay beyond the mountains or along the seaboard. Kirkwall had seemed so heavy a burden to bear, and what went on outside its deceptively safe walls was someone else's problem. Now, she knows she may never be free of the mantle of _champion._ It has been so long, she wonders if she knows how to live as anyone else.

This city is not hers to save.

( _his mess is not mine to clean up_ )

The last two days of their journey are a blur of small villages and neatly arranged farms. The ceaseless cobalt waves of the Waking Sea cap and roll against the rocky shore to the south; to the north, the ripe and restless plains, broken only by the towering arched columns of the Imperial Highway, gleaming like new snow as it stretches on toward the horizon.

Higher and higher, the gates of Cumberland rise before them. Evening comes. Varric has but to speak a name to the watchmen, and their entrance is assured. Hawke cannot help but remember her humbling, humiliating arrival in Kirkwall. The difference here is stark and immediate.

She will spend her life counting differences.

The cobblestone streets are a sunset haze of golden light. The day is winding down, but the streets are still busy. There are templars everywhere. Quietly, Merrill shrinks a little closer to Hawke as they make their way through the crowd. Kirkwall has taken the joy from her. Cumberland will not give it back.

The sun sinks below the walls, and darkness begins to fall in earnest. The street lamps are lit, one by one, sparks in the night.

They wander through winding alleys until they are found. The roots of Varric's network run deep across Thedas, and he is never without friends. Friends with coin and empty rooms, friends with enough connections and influence to hide a thrice-damned champion on a whim.

( _for a price, naturally, always for a price_ )

The old friend of Varric's takes them up a wide avenue that looks to lead closer to the centre of the city, where the lights of the enchanters burn the brightest, that highest of glass towers that has called to them for days upon days. The others follow, trusting and fatigued.

Only Isabela hangs back. She stands as if torn, one boot pressed to tiptoe, the worn leather but a whisper against the cobbles.

"The docks are calling," she says, and grins. "You'll find me once you're settled, won't you?"

"You aren't coming." It is no question, for Hawke has known this inconstancy before, and she knows that capricious smile. Isabela was too far from the sea for too long; she is giddy, drunk with the gulls and salt.

"Oh, I never allow others to incur a debt like this on my account," she says, and winks. "At least not the people I like, anyway. I'll find lodging, I always do. Keep the kitten out of trouble, will you?"

Hawke's mouth is full of disappointment; she purses her lips to keep it in. Belatedly, she nods and opens her mouth to make some fragile promise, but Isabela has already turned. Her medallions glint faintly in the lamplight before the shadows swallow her up, and she is gone.

 

**VI**

Cumberland is not as boring as she has been led to believe.

It is – however and above all things – _safe._ Their host is a dwarven man, the second son of a second son, with a family name she is repeatedly assured once stood for one virtue or another in Orzammar. Whoever he is, whoever he was, now he remains in perpetual awe of Varric's success and legacy. A favour owed, a debt repaid. Their arrangement is one that Hawke does not ask after – the sheer complication of this strange city and its shrewd surface dwarves, the nuances of merchant guild politics – all of it is enough to set her head to aching.

( _the price of elfroot, apples, Antivan silk, how many ways to split a sovereign_ )

Her world has narrowed in the days since Kirkwall. This is what she knows: a townhouse on a crooked lane, and a little courtyard all boxed in; dark rooms without books; lattice windows, a creaky stair. It is too much, and not enough. A blessing, a curse. She cannot for the life of her think to tell the difference.

In the weeks that have followed their discreet arrival in this city of sunlight and sea breeze, Hawke and her friends have begun to remember who they are. There is room to breathe here, room to stretch. Untangled, they wander, and linger, and seek. They hide in plain sight.

For Hawke, it is different.

At dawn, the chantry bells begin to peal. Deep, clear notes rumble across the unbroken morning. Her eyes open to grey light and low rafters. The thrum of the bells resonates deep inside her still waking mind, slumber's fog parting to this sweet and lonesome reminder of home.

( _but the bells of Kirkwall don't ring anymore, the chanters have all gone quiet_ )

Like the sun, she rises regardless. Here, at least, the bells still hold their sway.

She looks to where the others have found their peace, watching as she always has, wondering. There is a chantry chapterhouse not far from their new residence. Sebastian finds refuge in the quiet chapel there, where the sisters meet to do their good works. Hawke cannot bring herself to climb the steps. She lingers just beyond the courtyard, listening to the flame's call. Sebastian has seen her follow him. His archer's eyes miss nothing. Yet he does not wait for her, nor reach out to her on the steps as he once did. She remembers him as he was, armour gleaming in the morning light, his smile a graceful benediction.

Now his face is shadowed and restless, and all she sees is doubt.

There are days when the chantry does not beckon to her, days when she wanders aimless through the market, trailing glimpses of the dead in the faces that crowd the twisty cobbled streets. Little brother, baby sister, friend and foe and _him_ , blonde hair and straight nose, that roguish smirk a flash like sunlight, but she is never quick enough and it's never, _ever_ him.

( _forgive me, messere, thought you were someone else_ )

And there are some days when her feet will not let her rest, and she finds her way down to the docks at dusk, where squares of yellow light spill out into the street to break the twilight and whisper of forbidden things. In these smoky havens is where she finds Isabela and that smile like a stormy sea. They curl together in corners hung with rigging and canvas, a bottle of wine between them, and the quiet that stretches on in their midst could fill an ocean with stories and laughter, with promises unfulfilled. Hawke remembers all of it on those languid nights, each trial, each tragedy, and she wonders how Isabela does not drown in her loneliness, the weight of regret an anchor to drag her into darkness.

( _will we let the water take us, our pockets full of stones_ )

And sometimes in her sadness, Hawke untangles their fingers, breaking those bonds a single brittle bone at a time, and she leaves Isabela to the pale, sultry haze and stumbles out into the night, into the salt and cold, the true, empty silence that she craves. The waves are restless, the horizon endless. Nothing but open sea. There is no bleak fortress of stone and chain to stand black against the night and keep danger and demons at bay.

The Gallows had protected nothing in the end, and the templars had saved no one.

Would that she could have done any better.

On the nights when she has wandered, when she has lingered too long in places she ought not, Fenris meets her on some darkened corner, and brings her safely back. He never intrudes upon the time she spends with Isabela. Perhaps it frightens him away, as if he senses just how welcome his presence would be. When she teases him about it with her liquor loosened tongue, he only smiles and glances away, shy with his muttering.

In Kirkwall, all the lines were boldly defined, the here and the there, guarded and defended, only once encroached upon and then at dire cost. But in the dark dawn of aftermath, somewhere in the burning and the blood, the lines were blurred, redrawn. There is no here, no there. There is only empty space, only echoes and errors, and a tumbledown mess where the walls used to be.

Once, such glorious choice and unfettered freedom would have sent him chasing shadows in his dreams, hiding behind his solitude where the pain of love and trust could not touch him. Now, he stands beside her, steadfast, a true bearing. Whatever the anguish, whatever the cost.

In the dark Hawke thanks the stars, and lets them lead the way. 

 

**VII**

The day Isabela leaves, there is a change in the wind.

" _It's just a run up the coast,"_ she had said nights upon nights before, the wine bottle but inches from her lips, a grin there the glass could not hide. Wistful, excited. Radiant. Her eyes with their gleam of mischief had been so intoxicating, when for so long there had been nothing but tarnish, that Hawke had found no argument in herself to persuade Isabela to stay.

Now she is not the only one who watches the sea.

( _this new cage is no finer than the one left behind_ )

Days turn to weeks, the passing of sand through glass, and the echo of reminiscence rears its spiteful head. This absence is one that Hawke remembers with wilful clarity. The memories are bitter ones, old wounds bleeding fresh. Her arm is still tender, the bandit attack reduced to a single angry scar, all but healed; the pale, puckered lines that slash across her abdomen tell a different tale, one of champions and relics and ruin. The chance luck of a stranger's blade should not leave the greater mark.

All she has now is the woeful wanting of a pirate's care in the emptiness left by the healer's hands. The stars have fallen and the sky has gone dark, and she cannot steer for the vanity of her searching. She has turned the world upside down for Isabela. She has staked everything she had, braced against the reckoning of the storm, and come through to see the dawn – come through without the pirate for whom she had fought for all along. Now, trapped alone on this mirror of calm she drifts, forgotten.

Somehow, it is supposed to make for a better story. Perhaps she just cannot tell it right – or perhaps the world has grown weary of this tale that has been told before, of blades and betrayal and fair-weather friends. For no matter the worth she places on her love and loyalty, their friendship is and always will be at the mercy of Isabela's tidal heart.

And so Hawke waits for wind and sails to bring her pirate queen back to this safe harbour. The wait is a wretched one, without redemption or revelation, for when Isabela finally returns, it is only for a single night.

When Isabela finally returns, it is for only one thing.

The window opens, a breath of wind and a sigh of old wood. There in the very eaves of the house, Hawke wakes to slanting shadows and prisms of moonlight. She untangles herself from the lyrium vines that hold her to this world, and with a hush and a kiss she pulls herself from warm arms and slips quietly from the bed.

With ghostly reach, the curtains billow in the night breeze. Isabela is anxious, a bundle of energy, and she wears her new secrets as sly and tempting smiles. She perches on the window seat, the chill night at her back an invitation.

"Come with me," she whispers. She reaches out her hand, but there is no sweetness to this. "Both of you, please." It is as close to begging as Hawke has ever heard Isabela come, and she hates that it tugs at her heart so, in this moment so fleeting, with this gesture so grand.

She wants so badly to say _"yes" –_

She hesitates only a moment before she shakes her head " _no" –_

Deep inside, she can feel the earth shift with their breaking, hear it, that tremulous sigh like a siren's song. The sea rushes in to fill the void, a merciless tide to pull her wild and windblown companion away. Vying for purchase before her sorrow drowns what remains of her dignity, Hawke takes Isabela's outstretched hand, her bare fingers closing over gloved ones, threading together, a knot no man could know.

"Oh, _flames_ ," Isabela whispers, and swift and soft as wind she ducks her head and brushes her lips against Hawke's, and the sweep of her tongue is a burning brand. It's meant to be chaste, a bared heart goodbye, but it lingers too long and swells too much, and there is a mutter of a curse as she pulls away.

It is loss like Hawke has never felt.

And then Isabela is gone. The heat of her mouth is gone, the smoky scent of her hair, and the anchor of her hand disappears into the darkness. The window frame is naught but a broken promise draped all in white, and the night beyond is full of stars.

Caught somewhere between, Hawke shivers in her nightclothes and closes the window.

_(it comes in the night, a lover, a burglar, run it down, beg it to stay_ )

When she turns, she finds Fenris watching her.

Up on an elbow in their tangle of sheets, his markings limned in moonlight, the solemnity in his eyes speaks to what he saw. It hurts her eyes to see the solitary, distant beauty of him, and so she returns to the bed to spoil him with her darkness.

To dispel the illusion that they are anything more than so many shades of grey.


End file.
